Ebola; The Outbreak

Brandon Wegner

Mrs. Straub

Economics A3

7th October 2014

Ebola; The Outbreak

Ebola, is today's worldwide current event issue being lectured to the public.It is a virus that begins as a fever and will eventually lead to internal bleeding. This virus is spread through bodily fluids such as: saliva, blood, feces, and urination. The host species is still unknown. With this being the “talk of the town”, what does it have to do with economics? Since Ebola is a very severe and deadly disease, a treatment and or a cure needs to be formulated to safe the patients that have been infected, inevitably  these cures and or treatments come from the labs of researches and scientist. Their ability to research a cure costs money. So the question is how is, how is Ebola going to affect the economy?

Not only is this disease costing money it is costing lives. In this case the marginal cost are the people who have lost the fight. About over 1,100 lives have been taken by this death sentence and just over 2,000 lives have been impacted dramatically. Although the cost of this tragedy is the deaths of many, there is a “benefit”, may not be a great benefit, but there is one.

The “cure” has not yet been finalized. A “cure” called “ZMapp” has been released earlier in past years. This pill is for the use on animals to cure them so that it is not “safe” for human use. Some with the disease are willing to take the chance and try the pill just to take the chance of surviving. It had taken several months to produce the final product. This so called final product was one pill. ONE. If the U.S. would have contributed the money to the research of ZMapp and created multiple pills in that time frame they could of prevented toe spread if not destroy it all together. The scarcity for implementing a cure this malignant disease is impeccable.

Ebola as caused an uncompromising supply and demand issue. The ratio of supply to demand is skewed quite dramatically. In the fact that there is not nearly enough supply to skim the surface of the demand. Although the need for supply is the source in which this virus is a marginal benefit gathering money for research to finalize a cure to save the many lives being  damaged by this 21st century plague.

Overall, this bloodthirsty virus is spreading throughout the world, it may be the considerably the vital shift in the world as we know it. If the “cures” do not become accessible  in mass quantities, there will be close to no chance of it ever coming to a halt. The U.S. had the opportunity to essentially destroy or at least put a great dent in the outbreak before it had the opportunity to spread. Although the U.S. did not believe that Ebola would become a widespread threat, resulting in money being spent somewhere else. The U.S. should have funded a cure months ago, now it is much too late and the virus has became a vicious killer, out for the lives of many innocent people. Anybody could conclude that Ebola is a critical problem that needs to be dealt before it kills off 1,100 more people. We need to fund and find a cure.

Bibliography-

Last, Ikono. "Ebola - My Visual Charts & Projections Based on WHO Data, Page 1." AboveTopSecret.com. Above Top Secret, 07 July 2014. Web. 07 Oct. 2014.

CNN, News. "Spain Has Outbreak's 1st Known Case of Contracting Ebola Outside of Africa." Early Start with John Berman Christine Romans RSS. CNN News, 06 Oct. 2014. Web. 07 Oct. 2014.

Frieden, Tom. "Why U.S. Can Stop Ebola in Its Tracks." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 07 Oct. 2014.

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